Two CDs. One rock, one acoustic. Foo Fighters have just produced the album of their career. Trouble is, says Dave Grohl, it might also be their last...

There's nothing like being
made to feel welcome. As we approach Foo Fighters'
newly built headquarters in a serene, leafy neighbourhood in Northridge, California, an eight-foot iron
gate slowly grinds open and we're granted access to
what looks a lot like a military compound that has
been erroneously dropped into the middle of suburbia. You half expect to see heavily armed guards,
training their sights on any illegal down loaders hoping for a sneak preview of the band's new album.
Security is a serious business these days, it seems.
&nbsp Thankfully, the Foos are one of the friendliest
bands on the planet so instead of dodging sniper-fire
we're quickly ushered inside, plied with refreshments
and given a guided tour. It's hard not to feel a twinge
of envy. Put simply, this place kicks arse. With guitars,
drums, amplifiers and hundreds of metres of cables
littering the floor of one huge live recording room, it's
obvious that since its completion at the fag end of
autumn 2004, this has become the epicentre of the
band's creative world. It's a patently inspiring and liberating environment in which to make music.
Suddenly, the fact that the Foos' new album ended
up being a sprawling double - one half rock, the
other acoustic - starts to make sense.
&nbsp "You want to hear it?" asks a beaming Dave Grohl
as he appears from nowhere, looking fighting fit and
as irrepressibly chuffed as ever. He leads us into a
room containing a vast, gleaming mixing desk, points
us towards sumptuous leather chairs in front of colossal, towering speakers and gives us hand-written
track-listings. "This album was fun to do," he smiles.
"You want it loud, right?" And then, as a scabrous
wall of howling feedback erupts from the speakers
and the title-track from 'In Your Honour' begins, he
disappears through another door, leaving us alone
with the music.
&nbsp Ninety minutes and 20 tracks later, it's clear that
not only is this the best album Foo Fighters have ever
made, it's also going to surprise the shit out of a lot
of people. The first CD exists in familiar, rock-related
territory - although the seething title-track is by far
the heaviest thing the band have ever recorded - but
its acoustic counterpart is a curveball of epic proportions. From sparse ballads like 'Friend Of A Friend' to
the disarming, bossa nova jazz of 'Virginia Moon'
(featuring Norah Jones) and the fleet-fingered, Josh
Homme augmented 'Razor', it's a diverse and frequently daring
collection of songs that adds a whole new dimension
to the Foos' identity.
&nbsp "Like I say, man," Grohl sayS has he re-enters the
room. "It was a lot of fun. So, what do you want to
talk about?"

WHEN YOU DID PROBOT YOU SAID YOU WERE SICK
OF WRITING RADIO-FRIENDLY SONGS AND WANTED
TO CONCENTRATE ON METAL NOW YOU'VE DONE
AN ACOUSTIC CD. WHAT CHANGED?
"It's all about the love of making music, and to be
able to do it in so many different ways is even better,
To come in and have a song with mellotron, a 12-string guitar and a vocal can be just as satisfying as a
Big Muff pedal and a 26-inch kick drum. It's just good
to spread it out."

YOU ONCE DISMISSED 'LEARN TO FLY' AND 'NEXT
YEAR' AS "MIDDLE-OF-THE-ROAD FUCKING POP
SONGS"..
"See, the purpose 'Next Year' served was to bridge a
song like 'Stacked Actors' with a song like 'Ain't It
The Life', to make that transition without it seeming
too schizophrenic. I love 'There Is Nothing Left To
Lose'. Those are some of the best songs we've written,
But when it comes to playing live it was those songs
in the middle ground that never really worked."

DOES THIS ALBUM INDICATE A DESIRE TO MESS
WITH PEOPLE'S PERCEPTIONS OF WHAT FOO
FIGHTERS ARE ALL ABOUT?
"Not really. It's more about discovering what the band
is capable of doing. It's just flexing the usual muscles
in a weird way. It was always inevitable that we'd do
one of these albums at some point down the line. It's
just that we made them both at the same time."

SO IS THIS THE DEFINITIVE FOO FIGHTERS ALBUM?
"In a way, yeah. I always consider each record to be
our last album anyway, just because it's gone on for
so fucking long now that I can't see it continuing!"

REALLY? GIVEN HOW POPULAR YOU ARE, WOULDN'T IT BE INSANITY TO STOP NOW?
"Of course, but that's just how I always feel, When I
was a kid I never imagined I'd live to be 16, because
that's when you got your driver's license, It's a fatalist
cop-out thing (laughs), So with this album I always
imagined that a double record like this was a good
way to send it off, a good way to say goodbye."

DOUBLE ALBUMS ARE QUITE A SELF-INDULGENT
EXERCISE, THOUGH, AREN'T THEY?
"It is a lot to get your head around, Everyone expects
us to do a rock album, but the acoustic record, that's
the one where it throws people for a loop because it
doesn't sound like a Foo Fighters album, In fact, I
originally thought about only releasing the acoustic
record."

DID YOU RECORD LABEL HAVE A FIT WHEN YOU SAID
YOU WERE DOING A DOUBLE?
"They didn't ask, They wanted to put out a
greatest hits record before this and we didn't want to
do that, Fuck it. This is our greatest hits, You've just
never heard them before and we're not calling it
that!"

THE TITLE-TRACK IS PRETTY EXTREME BY YOUR
STANDARDS. WHAT PROMPTED THE DECISION TO DO
SOMETHING SO HEAVY?
"A lot of our songs have a somewhat predictable
composition, so it's fun to write songs that don't. It's
really fucking cool to have just three minutes of noise
and then rolling drums for a minute-and-a-half and
then into full-on thrash! It's fucking awesome. I
remember when we were rehearsing it, our guitar
tech came in and said, 'What the fuck is that?', and I
said, 'That's the song we're opening the show with
for the next two years', and he said, 'Wow, after 'All
My Life' I didn't know how you guys were going to
open a show ever again!'."

THE ROCK HALF OF THE ALBUM DOES SOUND
CUSTOM BUILT FOR BEING PLAYED LIVE...
"Yeah, so for the first time we can actually bring a
whole album out onstage every night. Finally! It only
took 10 fuckin' years!

YOU'VE SAID THAT 'IN YOUR HONOUR' WAS
INSPIRED BY YOUR TIME WITH JOHN KERRY DURING
LAST YEAR'S PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS.
"The song itself was just inspired by going out on the
campaign trail and experiencing such a strong sense
of devotion and belief. People were getting together
to make a difference, for the sake of something honourable. It's that overwhelming feeling of connection
with something. It could be love, it could be football,
it could be music, it could be anything. I'm trying to
keep it general so people don't focus on one specific
Ithing. It's not a political record at all."

SO HOW DEPRESSED WERE YOU WHEN BUSH GOT IN
AGAIN?
"Everyone was fucking pissed. Really fucking upset.
My immediate reaction was, 'Fuck it all, let's riot! Fuck
you world! I fucking hate everyone that didn't vote
for Kerry!'. But that's ridiculous. You have to do
something to make things better. As John Kerry said
when he conceded defeat, 'Just keep fighting the
good fight'."

HORRENDOUS POLITICAL SITUATIONS DO SEEM TO
INSPIRE GOOD MUSIC, THOUGH, DON'T THEY?
"When George Bush was first elected president, I
tried to see something positive in it. I thought,
'Maybe this will inspire artists and musicians to make
better music'. When Reagan was president it was the
heyday of hardcore. The music was so good back
I then. But if I'm honest, I'd take shitty music over this
president any day! (laughs)"

SOME OF THESE NEW SONGS SEEM PRETTY DARK,
WHICH MIGHT SURPRISE PEOPLE WHO EXPECT YOU
TO BE THAT CHEEKY GUY WHO SMILES All THE
TIME...
"What, 'The Happy Guy'? (laughs) Yeah, that's a total
pain in the ass! I suppose this album is a little darker,
but a lot of these lyrics were written quickly, off the
cuff. I'm really embarrassed about lyrics. It's hard to
write something and think, 'Wow, I'm clever!'. Lyrics
are fucking tricky, man."

OBVIOUSLY, BECAUSE OF YOUR PAST WITH NIRVANA
AND THE WHOLE MYTHOLOGY THAT SURROUNDS
THAT, YOUR LYRICS ARE SUBJECT TO AN UNUSUALLY
HIGH LEVEL OF SCRUTINY. DOES THAT BOTHER YOU?
"Oh, for sure. Yeah. Even if I say the words 'never
mind' people jump on it and get all excited, all the
alarms go off..."

YEAH, THE ALARMS WENT OFF IN MY HEAD WHEN I
HEARD YOU SING THAT IN 'FRIEND OF A FRIEND'...
"I'm sure they fuckin' did! Just so everyone knows,
that song was written 14 years ago. I wrote it right as
I joined that band, and I did write it about Krist, Kurt
and myself. They were friends of a friend of mine,
which is how I joined the band. I did think,
'Goddamnit, I don't know if I want to field a load of
crap about that song for a year and half', but it's a
great song'"

THEN THERE'S 'THE LAST SONG' ('THIS IS THE LAST
SONG I WILL DEDICATE TO YOU..') WHICH PEOPLE
ARE CLEARLY GOING TO MAKE ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT...
"Yeah, let's give everyone something to talk about!
(laughs) All I've got to say is that there's a whole lot of
people that I love and hate far more than any of the
people that you know I know."

YOU'VE GOT SOME HIGH PROFILE GUESTS ON THIS
ALBUM, TOO.
"Ah, my famous friends! Yeah, we had a long list of
people that we wanted to ask. I thought it'd be fun to
have guests because we'd never done it before, so we
thought about Jim James from My Morning Jacket, Ry
Cooder, Greg Norton from Husker Du, John Paul Jones,
Norah Jones and Josh [Homme]. In the end we blazed
through the acoustic stuff so quickly it just didn't seem
like we needed all those people."

JOHN PAUL JONES (LED ZEPPELIN) PLAYS PIANO ON
'MIRACLE'. THAT MUST HAVE BEEN EXCITING...
"Aw, shit, it was unreal. He's such a good guy. He
doesn't seem like a spooky, pretentious legend. He
came in with his mandolin and said 'Hi'. We had to
hold back from asking every question we'd ever
wanted to ask about Led Zeppelin. I tried to be cool
but I'm sure I looked like a total fucking idiot. I was
shitting my pants. Full diaper! (laughs)"

AND THEN THERE'S THE TRACK WITH NORAH JONES.
LOOK AT YOU WITH YOUR JAZZY, BOSSA NOVA VIBES!
"Yeah, we're so multi-faceted! (laughs) That song's
about eight years old. We tried to put it on '...Nothing
Left To Lose' but it just didn't make sense. We did one
version where we tried to turn it into 'Everlong' but it
didn't fucking work. That's on a tape somewhere."

ONE FOR THE BOX SET?
"Oh yeah. There's a lot of shit! For every 12 songs you
heard on each album there's another 12 that didn't
make it. You'll never hear them, and that's because
they're shit! One day we might put out a record called
'Crap We Never Used' or 'Scrapings' or something. But
I figured that 'Virginia Moon' might actually make
sense on this album. I thought it would be cool to
have some piano on there, and I heard a Norah Jones
record and thought, 'Cool! Maybe she's the one I
should call."

LIKE A LOT OF THINGS ON THIS ALBUM, IT'S GOING
TO SURPRISE PEOPLE.
"The thing is, if it was someone like Charlotte
(Hatherly) from Ash or anyone that people consider to
be cool or hip, it wouldn't be a big deal, but the fact
that it's Norah Jones kind of freaks people out. That's
dumb. I can understand it with me being on a Nine
Inch Nails record. People think, 'What? Grohl? He's not
a fucking goth techno creep! He's too happy!'. But I
don't care. I knew it would sound good. And it does
kick open another door for the band. That's what this
album is about in many ways. Who's to say what we
can't do? We might even start doing show tunes! Or
reggae!"

It's a sobering thought. Dave Grohl grins beatifically
once more - despite his discomfiture. he really does
seem to be 'The Happy Guy' most of the time - and
heads off to grab some coffee. It's time for Foo
Fighters to get back on the touring treadmill, to introduce an expectant world to the myriad delights of an
album that has both reawakened their enthusiasm for
being on the road and stretched the boundaries of
what a modern rock band is expected - or even
permitted - to do.
&nbsp "When we stopped touring after the last album we
were all like, 'Well, we're never fucking doing that ever
again!'," laughs Grohl heading for the door. He lights a
cigarette and shrugs dramatically. "But two months
later we started talking about doing this record and
now here we are again. Man, we just can't help it!"